Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [252]
“I will be the first to say I was not ready for it,” Anne Revere acknowledged. “I hadn’t had enough experience in pictures. But I was not the cause of the debacle. First, they couldn’t understand the kid. And Spence would laugh and say, ‘Well, I’m only a hundred pounds overweight.’ The whole thing started to look absurd! So finally they packed it up and took it home.”
Tracy commandeered a new Cadillac the production manager had purchased and, hiring a driver, proposed that he and Eddie Lawrence ride over to Jacksonville to catch a train. When they got to Jacksonville, Tracy told Lawrence he liked riding in the car and was in no hurry to get home. “You know, Eddie, American Airlines goes through St. Louis—we’ll go to St. Louis.” When Lawrence said that he was going to call the studio, Tracy said grandly, “Oh, forget the studio!”
Said Lawrence, “He loved to needle you—a lot. So finally, going through Georgia, I saw this old fashioned praline factory, and they had big bags of pralines hanging down. And I knew Spence, so I gave the boy six bucks (or whatever it was) and I said, ‘You take Mr. Tracy over—’ and in the meantime I called the studio. They said, ‘Good God, where is Spencer?’ Because this was after [it was known that he had] periodic problems … I told ’em, ‘Look, I’ll keep in touch with you. There’s nothing else I can do. Tracy’s fine—he hasn’t had a drink.’ ”
With Gene Eckman and Anne Revere in one of the few stills to emerge from the Florida location of The Yearling. (ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES)
From Atlanta they moved on to Nashville, where they put up for the night at the Hermitage and, with M-G-M’s pull, got the Presidential Suite.
And then the next morning Tracy said, “Look, we’ll go to Chicago.” I said, “All right, Spencer, we’ll go to Chicago.” So we went up through all that wonderful country…[and] we got to the Blackstone Hotel. And they scared me to death. The guy who took the bags said, “Oh, Mr. Tracy, I’m the one who bought you the booze, remember?” Oh boy, here we go, here we go, here we go. But we didn’t. I had the most wonderful four days with Spencer. He was warm, he was friendly, we walked a lot, went to the lake… Helen Hayes was in town, and he called her and we had dinner at the Ambassador East, and I remember she kind of laid him out. He was talking about, oh, he wanted to go back into theatre. And she said, “Spencer. Sunday matinees, you know. And night shows? I don’t think you’d care for that.” But it was a pleasant time until finally Spence said, “I guess we’d better get home.”
Tracy objected when Lawrence said that he would get him a compartment and take a roomette for himself. “No, no, no,” he said. “A compartment to sit up in, and a compartment to lie down in, and I want you to have a compartment. Three compartments.” As soon as they boarded the train, Lawrence, remembering his first encounter with his charge on the set of Riffraff, sought out the porter. “Look,” he said. “This compartment? You never, never knock on the door, never, never bother the occupant. Don’t even make up the beds.” That night on the Chief they ordered steaks, and Tracy, who marked three years of sobriety on May 1, made the only reference Lawrence ever heard to his alcoholism. “Eddie,” he said glumly, “I’d love to have a glass of beer. But you know if I have one beer I’m gone.”
Back at the studio, there was a hot session over the fate of The Yearling. “How can I,” Fleming reportedly asked, “make a picture whose essence is that people love each other, when no one in the cast loves anyone or loves being down there or loves making the picture?” The next day, Eddie Mannix floated the possibility of King Vidor taking over as director, and Tracy, who was friendly with Vidor but not particularly close, made no objection to the idea.
Tracy made another test with Gene Eckman on May 27,